Chapter Eighteen

A KILLER COMES CLOSE

KENT MURDOCK PARKED in front of 118 Blake Street and sat there staring at the empty street while he finished his cigarette. As he tossed it out, a car went by and a bar or two of dance music from a radio escaped from a lowered window before it was lost in the sound of the exhaust. He watched the car turn the corner and then the street was quiet again and he stepped out and glanced at the four-storied apartment building, one of a block-long row with ground-floor entrances which were distinguishable only by the design of the door and the number and name thereon.

He did not feel like going in. His head had begun to ache again from the swelling Erloff’s blackjack had put there that morning and there was a throbbing too in his side from Leo’s final kick. It seemed like a week ago, that struggle in Roger Carroll’s studio, and he felt as weary as though he had been awake even longer than that.

But Blake Street was on his way to the hotel and he wanted a quick look around before he went to bed. Louise had called here some hours before and Murdock wanted to know why she had stayed an hour and so he crossed the walk and glanced up and found the front windows dark.

2-D, Gail Roberts had said, and he pushed past the glass swinging doors and crossed the vestibule and went up two steps to another glass door. The foyer was dimly lighted by a floor lamp that looked like a vase with brightness coming from the top. There was some mission furniture scattered about and looking deceptively comfortable; there was a single elevator door, and stairs that curved out of sight along with a wrought-iron railing. When he saw that the elevator had stopped at some upper floor he went up the stairs and down a dim corridor with pebbled plaster walls and ivory doors.

There were four of these doors and 2-D was on the right, rear. He had the key in his hand as he approached it but he had a little trouble making the key work. Then the door opened for him and some of the dimness in the hall made a slanting rectangle on the carpet. He left the door open until he found the light switch and when he turned it he saw the picture over the mantle.

It was a painting by Carroll, an oil on canvas. It was the blue valley scene he had refused to sell to Watrous or Barry Gould and its blue tones looked very well against the dusty-pink wall.

Murdock closed the door and walked to the center of the room. It smelled rather strongly of paint and turpentine and varnish, and everything about the walls and woodwork and floor looked very clean and fresh. The Governor Winthrop desk and the two straight-backed chairs looked second-hand; so did the Boston rocker. There were two overstuffed chairs that wore new-looking slip covers and there was a Lawson sofa, very old and worn, with some other slip covers folded across the back. Murdock saw all this in his first inspection of the room and then he was frowning at the painting of the blue valley.

He was still standing in the center of the room when he heard it, a clicking sound, remote yet somewhere within these rooms. A familiar sound, a remembered sound that vibrated through him and left him tense and listening.

For seconds there was nothing more. Yet the room was suddenly close and his nerves were taut with a sudden awareness of danger. He turned his head and saw the closed door on his right, the open doorway diagonally ahead and to the left of the fireplace.

Then he knew what the sound was and where he had heard it before, and the thought struck a warning gong within and he felt the way he felt the night before—in the alley behind Lorello’s place.

He shifted his weight and moved one foot cautiously. He turned toward the open doorway and then the sound he had been waiting for came and he knew for sure that someone had been here when he entered. Someone had been about to leave and had nearly been trapped. He knew also that if he had come a minute earlier he would have walked in on this someone before he could get away.

He forgot caution now and silence, because he knew the second sound he had heard had been the closing of a door whose stealthy opening had first warned him. He went through the doorway and swiftly along a hall and into a kitchen and there was enough light behind him so he could see the door.

So intent was he on his pursuit that he forgot the odds. He forgot the warning gong and ignored the intuitive pressure that told him of danger. He only knew that he had missed his man last night, that perhaps if he was quick he might do better this time.

He crossed the linoleum and reached for the door. It was unlocked, as he had known it would be, and he stepped into the opening. There was just an instant when he hesitated and he may have seen a shadow move in the darkness below him. Whatever he saw or felt made him flatten himself instinctively against the edge of the door; then the stairwell exploded fifteen feet below him.

Flame struck at him and the stairs seemed to rock. A gun roared and even as he heard it he felt the jolt in his shoulder as something hammered against it.

He fell away and stepped back into the kitchen, hearing the staccato beat of steps on the stairs, the quick opening and closing of some door below him. Then it was quiet again and he was cursing.

He closed the door and locked it. He kept cursing, softly, viciously. At himself and his stupidity. He had been hit and it was his own fault. For he had forgotten the most important thing of all: that he was dealing with a killer and one who worked with a gun.

He found a light and turned it on. He looked down at his shoulder and ran his hand over the cloth covering it. There was a slight numbness but no hole, no blood. He flexed the muscles and looked again; then he stepped to the door.

There was an upward-angling, splintered hole on this side. It was about an inch from where his shoulder had flattened against the edge. Then he realized he had not been hit at all, that it was the shock and vibration of the panel against his tightly pressed muscles that had jolted him and made him think so.

He found no relief in the knowledge. It had not been his fault that he had escaped. A slug through the shoulder would have been a fairly easy penalty for the chance he took. A little more light, a little steadier hand behind the gun, and he would not be here fuming at his insanity and failure.

His good fortune failed to bring any sense of gratitude or relief. He shook off his anger and looked along the wall until he found the bullet hole. Then, as he examined it, he heard a window open. He heard a door open in the hall and the faint buzz of excited voices.

He went quickly to the living-room and snapped off the light. He could hear the voices more plainly now, the low excited voices of neighbors discussing the shot they had heard. A window slammed shut. A door closed and the voices died away and Murdock sat in the darkness and waited.

He smoked a cigarette while the house quieted down. He smoked another before he snapped on the light. Then he sat staring at the painting of the blue valley that hung over the mantle. He stared at it a long time, his lids narrowing as he estimated its size. Then, out of nowhere, a new idea took root in his brain and blossomed rapidly.

Tossing his cigarette into the fireplace, he stood up. “It’s close,” he said, half aloud; “it’s about the right size.”

He reached up and took the picture from the wall. Turning it, he saw that four bent nails held the stretched canvas in the frame and he twisted these so that the canvas and inner frame could be removed.

For an excited moment or two then, he examined the back of the canvas; then the quick new hope went away and he had nothing left but weariness and disappointment. He put the inner framework on which the canvas was stretched back in the ornamental frame and turned the four nails to secure it. He hung the picture and studied it and tried to think.

Louise had been here about an hour. According to Jack Fenner, she had taken nothing with her. What, then, had she been doing during that hour?

He realized finally that he was not doing any good. He was thinking hard but fatigue had dulled his capacity to reason logically. He could not concentrate, nor follow through an idea to any reasonable conclusion. When he found his thoughts going round and round in the same unchanging pattern, when he saw he could not get beyond that pattern, he knew he would have to come back.

He had learned nothing more than he had known when he came except that someone besides Louise was interested in this apartment. He doubted if that someone would come back tonight. In the morning perhaps he could think of something else.

He opened the door, glanced out, then turned off the light. He went into the hall and closed the door quietly. There was no sound now but the tap-tap of his steps on the composition stairs.